So, tonight I hung up on a decent, kind old man. The fact that I was
tired, that I'd been up since the day before, that my mother's dog
is quite probably going to die despite our trip to the emergency
on-call vet'sthat doesn't excuse what I did. And I'm not writing
this note to excuse my action, nor to apologise, because I did what
I thought was the right thing to do. And I still think so.

Julian Heicklen is a decent, kind, elderly man who believes in
classical liberalism. He believes that he has constitutional rights,
that the state exists with his consent, and that it proposes to take
a large amount of his income, a part of what he spends on gasoline,
and a part of nearly every other thing he does or buys, and with
that enormous wealthtrillions of dollars over the last sixty
years, defend his life, his liberty, and his property. He's wrong.

He's mistaken because the system of classical liberalism to which he
has devoted his life is based on fallacies. It is based on the
fallacy that the state cares about his consent. It does not. It
could care less if he chooses to consent or not. The people who run
the state do not care whether or not he agrees to their terms. If he
objects, they'll put him in a cage. If he resists, they'll kill him.
They have already put him in a cage and killed many who have
resisted. For example on 4 May 1886 in Chicago those who ran the
state instigated a riot by police which killed many. For example 4
May 1970 in Ohio those who ran the state instigated a massacre by
national guard troops who killed and wounded manyon the orders
of president Nixon. I could give other examples of people whose
resistance at any level was met with brutalityWaco, Ruby Ridge,
those people you saw being butchered by a militaristic pig in a
helicopter on that Wikileaks video.

The state is killing people right now in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen,
Somalia, and sometimes you learn of it. The state has not "declared
war" or followed the constitution in any aspect of torture,
indefinite detention, execution, and mass murder. To expect it to do
so is madness.

For sixty years the state has been making things safer for the
Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
For sixty years the state has been capturing and logging all the
communications in the world under a program called ECHELON
administered by the National Security Agency. These institutions
exist to protect these institutions, not you.

The state does not care whether you consent or not. The state is
perfectly agreeable to killing you, today, without trial, to protect
the interests of those who run the state. The state has not gotten
better by being admonished about fully informed jurors. And the
state has persisted in making up evidence, lying on the witness
stand, and engaging in double jeopardy over and over again to get
its way. The Donald Scott case, the Tonya Craft case, the Watergate
investigation, every scandal for the last sixty years reveals that
those who operate the state are prepared to lie, cheat, and steal in
court just as much as they do in elections, just as much as they do
in all other aspects of your encounters with the state.

So then a friend of mine informs me that he turned the conversation
some hours after I hung up. w00t.

Well, tell me about it, Keith. Tell me about something involving
not spending the next 60 years of my life doing the same things
that Julian Heicklen has been doing, making things worse. Tell me
about somehow not having the state get worse and worse, built up and
built up over his objections to counter his resistance. Tell me all
about how things are going to be better some other way.

Because I tell you this: No eternal reward can forgive us now for
wasting the dawn. I cannot accept Julian's proposal that we join him
in "doing this for sixty years" in celebration of the results of his
endeavours. To accept his proposal would be madness.

For sixty years he has tried engagement, negotiation, and
protest. For sixty years he has handed out literature and been
arrested eight times. For sixty years he has demanded that the state
fulfil its obligations under the classical liberalism fallacies that
the state involves his consent, that the state serves to protect his
freedoms. And for sixty years the state has spat upon his point of
view and treated him like dirt.

Can you see that this proposal isn't working? Can you imagine
that it would ever work? The people who operate the state are knaves
who do not give a DAMN about his consent. They exist to separate
him from his property, his liberty, and to the extent they choose,
his life, for the benefit of those who run the state. Sometimes the
state is polite about spitting on him, and sometimes they are
unpleasant about it. But he is not welcome to speak, he is not
"allowed" to pass out literature, and he is not to be photographed
while being arrested, "or else." And on rare occasions, in their
consummate finesse, they "allow" him to pass out literature and
judges still excuse jurors who think they have the ancient authority
to judge the law as well as the facts.

The justice he seeks in their courts does not exist. The state
has taken away all due process, already, and the president has
authorised the execution of an American citizen without trial,
without any opportunity to present a defence, without any of the
other protections for the accused. And Julian's method has therefore
failed.

So, yes, Keith, if there is some way forward, I might like to
hear about it. I'm not confident that I have the stomach to listen
to the old man moan about the constitution again for the first hour
to get to this glorious third hour you mention, so maybe you could
simply riddle me this: What's it all about?

Confronting the state and resisting it directly is a snare for your
feet. What is it about the results from the American revolutionary
war that you would care to repeat? What is it about the protests at
the Haymarket in Chicago and at the campus of Kent State in Ohio
that you would like to see happen again? Is it the bloodshed? Are
you thinking that you have enough blood, this time, to wash away the
state and its depredations?

How many died in vain for this belief on the battlefields at
Saratoga and Yorktown, all the while Washington and Hamilton were
plotting the rise of their dominating central state? The regular
army was a complete failure until Yorktown, losing battles,
retreating in disorder. The militia, including the volunteer
sharpshooters kept winning, including at Saratoga. Yet Washington
insisted on a "professional" military with discipline he imposedat
times with death, on more than one occasion in the face of full
blown mutiny.

Why? Because he wanted a cadre who would obey, no matter what. And
he got it, and that is the seed around which the military of the USA
was built. The direct, necessary consequence of that choice is a
helicopter full of gung ho morons slaughtering civilians on that
video at Wikileaks. Stare into the face of that viciousness. Or
stare into the viciousness of the Nazi SS as they slaughtered 20
million civilians in addition to their share of the tens of million
more dead from the combat.

And for what did all those people die? A different brand of
injustice.

American soldiers and sailors and airmen have been fighting and
bleeding and killing and dying since before the nation declared its
independence for what? For nothing. It has done no good.

They swore an oath to uphold and defend the constitution from all
enemies foreign and domestic, and they failed. They failed and have
been sent, since 1945, to fight countless wars in countries all over
the world without any declaration of war. The USA has intervened in
dozens of countries, has bases in over a hundred countries, and
totally ignores the constitution. Is that the liberty these men
fought and bled and died to defend?

They swore an oath to defend the constitution which says that the
accused have rights. And the accused have been stripped of their
rights on military bases in Cuba and elsewhere. The constitution
says that no one who swears to uphold it shall inflict cruel and
unusual punishments. And the military inflicts those cruelties and
punishments, without trial, without compulsory process for defence
witnesses, without the accused having the freedom to confront the
witnesses against them. The military has failed.

And if the military has failed, if the millions who have worn
uniforms and have fought and bled and died have failed, what a
miserable idea it is to charge the barricades. What additional
valour do you bring to this party? You bring more blood, it is true,
and I would that you did not empty your arteries on the ground at
the feet of tyrants. But you bring no greater gallantry, no more
noble daring. And you don't have any better weapons. What usually
happens when men and women without guns go up against men and women
with guns? Consult the bodies at Kent State.

It hasn't worked. Resisting the state has built up the muscles of
the state wherever it has been resisted. Protesting the state for
sixty years has utterly failed to improve things. Rather, to the
contrary, Julian Heicklen's efforts have made things worse. The
state is more tyrannical, more vindictive, less amenable to change
because it is being resisted.

Another PathFor some time now I have made this point and sought that it
might sink in. I see that I too have been a failure. But at least I
have not been at it for sixty years. Yet.

The point is not really my own, but was made by the ancient Chinese
sage and philosopher Laozi. It was made again by Étienne de La
Boétie.

You do not have to place your hands upon the tyrants to make them
fall. Withdraw your support and they'll fall.

Shedding your blood before a federal courthouse in a reckless charge
of the barricades is not withdrawing your support. It is engaging
the system.

Arguing with federal pigs about your right to video an arrest or a
distribution of literature is not monkey wrenching the system. It is
engaging the system, asking for permission from the seat of power,
validating their control.

What does it mean: monkey wrench? It refers to a particular type of
spanner that was invented by Charles Moncky. It is an adjustable-end
spanner. Throwing one in disgust into the works of a factory may
have the sometimes desirable result of sabotaging that factory.
Which brings us to the sabots or wooden shoes that workers in France
used to use for such work, gaining them the name saboteur.

So monkey wrenching the system would involve shutting off the power
to the court building. Or burning the post office to the ground the
day before tax payments are mailed. (Whoops, most tax payments are
not mailed, and most of those tax returns mailed in are demanding
refunds of taxes already withheld. Too bad.) Monkey wrenching might
involve an asymmetric thrust on one of the shuttle solid boosters
causing carnage to all in the vicinity as the shuttle shears off its
restraining bolts and makes like a Catherine wheel toward the
viewing stands, as in a fabulous scene written by Victor Koman in
Kings of the High Frontier.

But engaging the federal pigs and recognising their authority to
accept or prevent your little literature distribution festival? That
isn't monkey wrenching. That does not destroy the system's ability
to oppress you. It recognises it.

I am not against the protestersDon't mistake my position. I am for those who protest the state
even though they do so in a way that I am confident won't work. I am
for those who have been arrested and abused and seek justice. I
don't expect them to get it in the enemy's courts, but I'm happy to
support their efforts. I am for those who are oppressed winning the
day.

And sometimes the system imagines that it is better served by
letting our friends go, or charging them with assaulting a federal
officer and then, curiously, releasing them on bail to be a future
"danger" to other federal officers as they have confusedly done in
the case of George Donnelly. I want George to have the best
representation possible, and if that means money, I'm happy to
provide money. If it means other forms of logistical or spiritual
support, I'm happy to do that. Not at all because of any love lost
between George and me over the yearsI don't agree with his
positions on many issues.

But I am also not for sending more men and women into the meat
grinder. And if you are, if you can show me how this has worked out
well in the past, if you can assure me that your generation of blood
brings to the butcher shop some special class of bloodiness that is
going to make all the difference this time, I shall listen, and
watch.

Your path has failed, again and again. Men and women with equal
vigour and far better weapons have failed again and again. Would
you, looking at the mangled bodies of these people, consider another
path?

I do not say that it is an easy path to walk. I do not offer medals
for courage and the enthusiasm of those who seek only bravery. You
may be called a coward and a reprobate and far worse thingsa
capitalist and a whore.

But it is a path forward that has worked, again and again, for free
people. It is the path of agorism. It is the path of withdrawing
your consent and your wealth and your mind from the state. It is the
path of John Galt's strike of the productive. It is the path of
Laozi turning away from power.

And I do say that in this generation we have invented something new
that makes all the difference, that brings added value to this
approach. We have open source software, encryption, and private
economic exchange technologies that allow any two people anywhere in
the world to exchange value privately without detection. Embrace
these techniques, help make them easier to use, and gain for them
widespread acceptance, and the state shall wither. For what they
cannot detect they cannot regulate, prohibit, nor tax.

Without compulsory taxation, the state is just another bully. And
perhaps in those death throes of the state it might make sense to
charge the barricades one last time, for old time's sake, to mingle
our blood with the wasted lives and crippled bodies of patriots who
thought theirs was the final battle, or the final war. You can do
that if you choose. You can go to hell, I'm going to Mars.

Like this? Why not pay the author!Select amount then click "Donate Now"

Pay to Jim Davidson
jim@vertoro.com

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, and anti-war activist. His
1990 venture to offer a sweepstakes trip into space was destroyed by
government action as was his free port and prospective space port in
Somalia in 2001. His 2002-2007 venture in free market money and
private stock exchange was destroyed by government action in 2007.
He's going to Mars if he has to walk. His second book, Being
Sovereign is now availble from
Lulu and
Amazon.
His third book Sovereign Self-Defense will be released for
Kindle soon. His fourth book Being Libertarian will be
available for free download as a .pdf, being a compilation of all
his essays and letters in The Libertarian Enterprise since
1995. Contact him at indomitus.net
or indsovu.com.